Phantom Eyes (Witch Eyes) (8 page)

“You
have
to,” he insisted. “You don’t have a choice.”

“You told me there’s always a choice,” I said, gasping as his mouth traveled down to my neck and he nipped again at the skin there.

His movements were more forceful now. Proprietary. Trey struck me as someone who was too classy to leave a hickey on someone else’s skin, but his lips kept moving, claiming one inch of skin at a time.

I never should have let him this close to me. That was the problem with Trey. If I wasn’t forceful up front—if I let myself think about it for even a few seconds—my mind wavered. Convictions that had been so firm only a few minutes before were now tenuous guidelines I could ignore easily, because it was
Trey.

My fingers wrapped around his wrist, holding him, claiming him. His eyes sunken and dull, clothes that had once fit so perfectly now hung loose and low on his stooped frame. He wasn’t anything that he’d been, but it mattered not, because he was
mine.

I pulled away from Trey so fast I nearly threw myself onto the ground. The vision that Grace had put into my head was never far from my thoughts. The
thing
that I’d become. The reason she’d started the feud in the first place—to make sure that Lansing and Thorpe would never align. But it had ha
ppened anyway, maybe even
because
of the feud that she’d created.

My breath came hard and fast, and I knew my eyes were wild but I had to get away. He reached for me and I skittered backwards, brushing up against one of the lounge chairs. I almost fell backwards, tripping over the frame, but Trey caught me. I scrambled out from his reach and around the chair, keeping it between us.

“What’s wrong?” I expected Trey to sound astonished, or worried. But it wasn’t that at all. He sounded like he’d been expecting that.

“Nothing,” I lied automatically, not even stopping to feel bad about it anymore. I was a liar. Liars lied. It was what we did.

“Braden … ” He didn’t push me. The intense expression on his face melted away, like I’d imagined the last few minutes. “You can teach me. Then we can figure out how to help you.”

“Trey … I can’t.”

Trey, who loved to push at me, who always seemed to know when my mind was never fully committed, chose to believe me. He slumped down a little, a man who’d had his last, and best, hope taken from him. “Okay,” he said, exhaling. “Okay.”

“I’m sorry, I just—”

“It’s okay, Braden,” he said. “It’s my problem, not yours.” But there was a look of determination in his eyes that I didn’t like. Something that made me a little bit nervous.

I walked out into the yard. There was a breeze coming down through the forest. I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to take it all in. Trey. Jason. This city. These people. What if I never had anything like this again? What if this was the closest, and the furthest, I’d ever get to being happy?

“I wouldn’t mind throwing Drew around the next time he put his hands on you,” Trey muttered. I looked up in surprise, saw the way Trey’s head was dropped down, a hint of red creeping up his neck.

I laughed, and the sound caught me so off guard that I had to stop immediately afterwards. It was like ripping off a bandage, only it was one I didn’t know I had. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed. Really laughed. The last few months had been one issue after another, and especially in the last couple of weeks, things had gotten so grim I’d forgotten how it felt.

Once I started, I had trouble stopping. “You … ” I gasped. “Jealous … of Drew!” And then I was howling. Tears sprang up at the corners of my eyes, and I fell backwards onto the grass and stared up at the sky. Of all the people to be jealous of, Trey was jealous of Drew! Anyone in their right mind would have known that Drew was the last person I’d ever be interested in. Plus there was the fact that he was still hung up on Trey’s sister. But the same way that the heart wanted what it wanted, the green-eyed monster hated what it hated.

Trey loomed over me, his expression dark, but I couldn’t stop. I grabbed at his arm, pulled him down with me. He dropped to his knees, then carefully laid himself down next to me, brushing up against my side.

I laughed until I thought I might start crying. Once the floodgates were opened, there was no telling what would sneak out. But laughter finally started to fade, and I stared up into a relatively blue sky. It was almost December in Belle Dam, and I was alive. Maybe not the person I’d been two months ago, but I was still someone who could laugh.

We lay there, barely touching, until I took the initiative to reach over, and lay my head down on his chest. I could hear his heartbeat, steady and solid. His chest rose and fell, and for just a few minutes, we were normal.

Of course it couldn’t last.

twelve

Trey only stayed another hour, and we didn’t move from our spot on the lawn. But just as I started to drowse, to slip under completely, he roused the me and led me back into the house. I was so tired and out of it that I didn’t even say goodbye, just wandered up the stairs and into my room while he let himself out the front.

I barely even remembered getting up from the back lawn at all because the moment I hit my bed, I was out. It wasn’t normal sleep, as some part of me was aware the whole time. My mind was covered in blankets of shadow, each time I managed to squirm out from underneath one, there was another dozen piled on top.

Garden statues lamenting burn the witches in olive hubris under ivory chains there are no two ways to bleed them dry dark melancholy grown on a bed of dire lies told and lies hidden shadowed gold boundaries of this land where blood runs counterclockwise burn this garden with weakness rip the humanity from her heart like weeds. Everything that was ours shall always be ours.

I was already standing at the side of my bed when I woke up.
Not again,
I nearly whimpered. But it didn’t look like I’d been bodyjacked again. Waking up came all at once, the first shocking moments of pond-jumping in spring, the way the water stabs the body into sensation.

It took several minutes before my body started to feel like mine again. Sleep was starting to become a wild card in my life—I never knew how I would wake up. Or where. My stomach started growling while I was still trying to figure out if I was okay or not.

The house was a quiet din as I left my room and headed through the winding halls down to the kitchen. I didn’t even know what half the rooms in Jason’s house were supposed to be for, other than getting lost in. At any given time, I really only knew my way to my room, the bathroom, the kitchen, and the library.

Someone else was already in the kitchen when I walked in. Expecting the gray-haired maid that prepared most of my meals, I was surprised to find Jason standing at the counter.

“Gentry made it home okay?” he asked. There was an undercurrent of
something
to his question, but I didn’t have the first clue about what he was implying. Jason was still a mystery to me, especially now.

“I needed a nap,” I said slowly, “so he went home.”

“Okay.” But it was not an “I take what you’re saying at face value” okay. It was more of an “I’ll accept that this is th
e lie you’re going to tell me” okay.

“You don’t need to check on me,” I said sharply. “I know what I’m doing.” Which was the biggest lie of them all.

“Braden,” he started, then sighed and shook his head. Jason walked to the end of the counter and scrubbed his hands with a dish towel that had been left there. Then I noticed his outfit: the rolled-up sleeves of his dress shirt, the lack of a jacket and tie, the frustrated scrub that had left his hair unkempt and scattered. Jason looked more relaxed than I’d ever seen him as well as more exhausted.

It was another side to a man who never showed me the same side twice. It was hard to get a read on him because the readings always changed. At first he was cold, then he was calculating, then concerned. Now, what? What was the role he was going for? Weary parent, tired of fighting the bad fight? Emotionally dra
ined and morally bankrupt?

“Sit,” Jason said. “I’ll make you something.”

Did I get swallowed up by a tornado or dropped down a rabbit hole? Jason was offering to
cook
? But he paid people to do that! Wary, like this was some kind of trick, I took a seat at the table, watching him pull out ingredient after ingredient from the fridge.

His movements were quick and precise, barely any motion wasted, and he arranged each of them on the counter evenly spaced from the next. Then he opened one of the lower cabinets, pulled out a saucepan and a skillet, and set them on top of the stove.

Things were washed, chopped, and poured all in a matter of minutes. Something sizzled in the skillet while he started deftly chopping something small and white, either an onion, or garlic.

“I thought Catherine was the one with a restaurant,” I said, trying to make a joke. At the sound of my voice, Jason flinched, and then all at once grew still. I flushed, and my voice dropped considerably in both tone and enthusiasm. “Sorry.”

“I’m just not used to other people in the kitchen when I cook,” Jason said, keeping his back to me. “For a second, I forgot you were here.” It was clear he felt just as awkward about the situation as I did. “But don’t ever apologize for speaking your mind,” he said, turning his neck enough to make it clear he was addressing me, but not enough to actually
look
at me.

“You hate when I speak my mind,” I said, still cautious.

He made slow, even slices over something wrinkled and red, sun-dried tomatoes I guessed. He was almost finished before he answered again. “You almost died …
twice.
I watched my brother raise you, sneaking peeks when I could. He kept you alive for seventeen years. I could have lost you within the first month.”

There was another one of those moments of stillness, as if Jason only allowed himself a second to succumb to whatever feelings were clawing at him, and then he was in motion again. The tomatoes were poured into the saucepan, then a few other ingredients, and he started to stir.

I kept opening my mouth, intent on saying
something.
Anything to drown out the silence that crept through the room and made the words that hung between us all the more awful. There were times that I thought I hated Jason, when I found him reprehensible and cruel and unfeeling. But I was starting to realize that no one could ever hate him more than he hated himself.

“I thought you would be more like me,” he said finally. “I knew you’d be strong-willed, of course, but I thought … Christ, I don’t know what I thought,” he muttered. “You have to understand, for most of my life, I knew my son would be the one to end the feud. He made me think my son would be the ultimate weapon. He was the one who said you had to be hidden away, for your own safety.”

“Lucien,” I said.

Jason nodded. “In forty years, he never steered me wrong. Of course I trusted him implicitly. Why wouldn’t I?” His laugh was bitter. “And then he almost killed you.”

He poured something else into the pan and then switched focus as he carefully laid several chicken breasts into the skillet and turned up the heat. “I saw my brother with you, you know. In the hospital. He was always so calm. Maybe that’s why I didn’t understand what it was like. Sitting there, hour after hour.
Waiting.
Feeling like you’re hanging on the edge of a cliff, and every moment is a chance for rescue or ruin. I do not understand how he did it. Just … so
calm
.”

“He got used to it,” I said slowly. “A trip to the ER probably never gets easier, but he had a lot of practice keeping himself together. That’s probably a Thorpe thing, how you never let people see you sweat.”

Another silence crept up between us, but this time the tension from a few minutes ago had diffused. There was a bridge building between the two of us—a shaky, tenuous bridge that could collapse into chaos at any moment, but it was a start.

“I never should have let him bring you back here,” Jason said. “But that’s no worse a crime than the rest of my behavior since your return. I should have seen the boy, not the magic. If I’d known that this was where we’d end up, I would have made different choices. Maybe. At least I’d like to think so.”

“I don’t know if it would have changed anything,” I said, thinking it over. “Lucien had all this planned. He would have brought me back, regardless of whether or not he had your blessing. And everything that’s happened since … I’m just as much to blame.” I thought about John, and the way he’d come back trying to protect me. Knowing there was something wrong before anyone else. Knowing
me.
Knowing the right thing to say when everything was going to hell.

It wasn’t Jason’s fault that he couldn’t be the replacement either of us needed. “You’ve done the best you could under the worst of circumstances,” Jason said. “John raised you well.”

“He did,” I nodded. “He was the best.”

“When … when John came home, I put out feelers. I had people looking for him. But he wasn’t trying that hard to hide,” Jason said with an exasperated laugh. “My brother, always making things harder than they needed to be.” Jason flipped over the chicken over and stirred the sauce in the other pan. “I told him everything would be forgiven, I would do anything he wanted, if only he’d tell me how to help you. I’d give you back to him, I’d leave him everything.
Anything.
But he had to help you.”

“He told you he would, didn’t he?” Jason didn’t have to admit it, I already knew. “And then he sent you after my mom’s family.” Maybe to get him out of the way, or maybe just so he wasn’t around to get underfoot. Because John knew that if he ever came back to Belle Dam, there would be a price on his head. He’d come after me, knowing it would probably be the last thing that he’d ever do.

I couldn’t say anything after that. There was a single moment where I thought it was going to be too much, where I was going to crack and break down and nothing would ever be okay again. And then there was John’s voice in my head, calm and placid the way he could get sometimes on summer nights.
“You’re the strongest boy I know. You’ll be capable of such great things someday.”

Jason put down the spatula and turned to look at me. His face was gray and tired, and he checked his watch. “The last ferry leaves in about an hour. Your aunt and uncle … they’ll meet you on the other side.” And it was clear he wanted to say more, but the words caught before he could get them out.

“Do you think they’d be able to protect me?”

“
Yes.”
I could tell it cost Jason to admit that. That someone could do something he could not. “They take family seriously. More seriously than anything else. They’ll protect one of their own with everything they have.”

Neither one of us said much after that, not until Jason portioned out the meal he’d cooked onto a plate and set it down in front of me. Bow-tie pasta, some sort of brown sauce, and a chicken breast. As soon as the food was put down, Jason went immediately back to cleaning the mess he’d made.

“It looks good,” I said, but it smelled even better.

Jason responded to my surprise with a wry, “I
can
cook, Braden. There are a lot of things you don’t know about me.” He paused. “And I about you, I suppose.”

Another silence eased up between us, but this one lacked any of the previous tension. It snuck up on me, I’d started tucking into the food as soon as the plate was in front of me, and it was only after I started eating that I realized how hungry I actually was. I’d scraped the plate clean and gotten up for seconds before I realized that Jason had been watching me for several minutes, all the mess already cleaned up. He’d combined the rest of the chicken and the pasta into the saucepan, and it was the only evidence left of the meal.

“What would you do, if you were me?” I asked, hungry for something other than food now.

Jason spread his hands in front of him. “I … don’t know.”

“But what do you
want
me to do?” I pressed.

It took a lot longer for this answer. “I want to know that you’re safe. What happens to me, or this town, that’s not your fault. It’s not your responsibility. I think I understand that, now.”

“So you want me to leave with them.”

“I … yes.”

Jason wanted me to leave. Lucien wanted me to stay. Grace wanted me for … I still wasn’t sure. No matter which way I turned, there were strings. People manipulating me. Even Jason. He might have been sincere, I
wanted
to believe he was, but he would use that against me in a heartbeat. Everyone wanted to make my choice for me, decide the path I was going to take.

“Just … be safe, Braden,” Jason said, before he got up and walked from the room.

Safe was just a word, though, and words could only get me so far.