Slashback (Cal Leandros, #8)(21)

One surprise visit to Sophia and it would be foster care for us, if there was room, a state institution if there wasn’t. Either way we would most likely be split up. It was a thought I’d had hundreds of times. Sophia was bad, worse than bad—especially for Cal, and I knew that. I also knew Cal without me beside him, knowing how special he was, wouldn’t survive. He might live, but he wouldn’t survive. And telling anyone else how special Cal was would make sure I wouldn’t see him again. That no one outside some government bunker full of medical equipment and autopsy tables straight out of The X-Files would see him again.

“Cal, tell me what happened,” I repeated. “Now.”

He ducked his head stubbornly. “It’s no big deal. Just a bottle. Sophia wasn’t as drunk as I thought she was. I can’t believe I let her hit me.”

Let her. Let her . . . as if it was his fault.

Last evening I’d told myself that I did the best I could in a bad situation. Now here was my best in vivid black and purple, showing me . . .

My best was worthless.

I bent my head, doubled over, linked my hands on the back of my neck, and stared blindly at the floor. Bile scorched the back of my throat. That’s the cliché I’d always read. Over and over. But it wasn’t bile that burned. It was vile. This was a thing so monstrous and vile that flesh should sear to ash at its touch.

When Cal was younger, he’d been quiet and careful around Sophia when she was drunk, the same amount of time she spent breathing, but by the age of seven he didn’t care anymore about triggering her temper. Instead he put his energy into dodging. He was reckless, quick, careless, and brave. He was so brave it hurt me to see it. Bravery comes only with that loss of innocence. There’s no need to be brave unless you’re pushed to that line and Cal had been forced to find his line far too young.

This was the first time Sophia had managed to hit him.

This was the last time she would try to hit him.

I’d warned her although she hadn’t ever come close to hitting me or Cal with her alcohol-blurred vision. I’d warned her often. She didn’t listen and she didn’t care. There was one thing to do.

Give her something to care about.

When she came back, I would break Sophia’s arm.

There would be no coming back from that, not for me, but now it was my turn to not care. It was my line and, like Cal, I had to cross it. That would give her six weeks to think over the consequences of leading a one-handed life. And when the cast came off and if she wasn’t convinced, if she threw a bottle at Cal again, I’d break her other arm. Anger like this, it wasn’t good and what I was thinking wasn’t right. But sometimes necessary was more important than right. It was a lesson I’d been slow to learn, too slow, but for my brother it was time to learn it. And hadn’t he tried to teach it to me before, since he was four years old? Seven years, but I finally saw what he’d been trying to tell me.

Practical. Like Cal. It was time to be practical.

There was an old Rom saying I’d once heard Sophia mutter: teach a dog to bite once and it will bite a hundred times. When you cross your line, that line disappears. You couldn’t retreat back behind it again if you wanted. You cross it, you erase it.

A hand patted my back, a patch of warmth. “It’s okay, Nik. It is. I promise. I’ve been bruised worse when I used to play dodgeball.”

That was a lie. As deep and purple-black as the bruise was, the bottle that hit him must have been heavy. Full. Sophia didn’t throw full bottles of any alcohol no matter how drunk she was. She must have been furious. I straightened and wrapped an arm around Cal’s shoulders. He was eleven years old. He was a child. If she’d hit him in the head, she could’ve killed him. She would be lucky if I broke only one of her arms. She would be lucky if I didn’t break her neck. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, opened them again, and tried for the discipline I’d been learning in dojo after dojo, gym after gym. Tried for calm.

It wasn’t there.

I needed a distraction. “Why exactly was Sophia so angry?” Not that she needed much of a reason.

Now he flushed red, not guilty anymore; he was mad. Furious. “She was stealing your college money. You need that money. It’s yours. So I called her a c—” His eyes slid sideways. “A dirty word. Like I said, she wasn’t as drunk as usual or she wouldn’t have tagged me.”

“Cal, you don’t provoke her. She’s insane.” She wasn’t. She was worse—evil, the Old Testament kind. Grendels and Sophia, they did their best to change my mind about the Fire. “It’s not worth it,” I said, touching a light fingertip to his bruise. “This isn’t worth it.”

The rest of what he said caught up with me. “And you don’t use that word. I know you’re getting older and hearing words like that at school. I know you’ll start using them sooner or later whether I like it or not, but never that word. Girls and women don’t like it and I don’t blame them.”

He leaned his head against mine with an unconscious affection Sophia hadn’t yet managed to tear out of him and considered. “I guess I could’ve called her what the old ladies down the street do. See You Next Tuesday.”

I swallowed an unexpected laugh. “No.”

See You Next Tuesday. That was as bad as when he’d bitten another kid in the first grade. The note he brought from school had said that was often a sign of acting out over issues at home—of which we had more than our fair share. A very unfair share in fact. When I’d asked Cal why he’d done it, he’d answered all innocence, “Because I wanted to know what he tasted like.”