High Voltage (Fever #10)(74)

I blinked back a swift burn of tears. I’d wondered, so many nights, in my private garden of silence at the end of each day, where my childhood love had gone. Why he’d never texted or called. He’d simply walked away, without another word. It had pained me almost beyond enduring.

Yet, all this time, Sean had been holed up in isolation, warded away from the world, trying to learn to control the Unseelie monster he’d become. All this time, I’d thought he’d left me because he didn’t want me, didn’t want us. And so, I’d given him his privacy. I’d not texted or called either. Stung, hurt. McLaughlin-stubborn and unyielding.

But that wasn’t why he’d left at all. Sometimes, despite the open window I have into everyone else’s emotions, I can be blind and foolish about my own. “Take me to him, Christian.”

“I hoped you’d say that.”





Crawling in my skin, these wounds they will not heal

I LOST ONE OF MY birds this morning.

His name was Charles James Aubry. He was twenty-three. He hung himself in my flat on Desoto after only nine days off the streets. I just dropped in on him three days ago and even I’d been fooled.

But I’ve seen many come and go and I’ve learned a bit about their ways; sometimes right before they check out, they seem better than ever, well-adjusted. Not giddy or tip-you-off kind of happy, but misleadingly balanced, and I wonder about that borrowed grace. Wonder about the enormous amount of pain they must be suffering to finally feel okay only when they decide to opt out of this crazy, beautiful world. You don’t see it coming, not even me. Although I’ve learned to watch for an unexpected, suspicious peace.



He left a note: I didn’t ask to be born.

I wish I had more time. I have a theory about depression. I think it comes from a shift in the chemicals in our brains because stress, trauma, and grief deplete our happy juice, disrupt the delicate, necessary balance and make the world go flat around us, get scary and monochrome, too heavy to bear. And once you’re there, with depleted brain chemicals and flat colors, you’re too depressed to fight your way out. I think exercise is a way to increase endorphins, rebalance the brain, and I wonder if my extreme velocity and constant motion feed my brain undiluted happy juice, constantly perking me up. I wonder if I figured out, say—the right blend of cortisol, 5HTP, and Bacopa, maybe a few other nootropics, plus lots of fun, physical activity, and loads of kindness and sunshine—then gave those people one happy, stress-free year without any responsibility, maybe I could turn their world around.

I cut him down and held him. He was still warm; I may have missed him by an hour, he must have died shortly after dawn. Lingered to watch one more sunrise. If so, that slayed me because it meant he still had joy somewhere inside, if only someone had been able to reach and nurture it. I wrapped him in a blanket and took him to a cemetery I use for the lost ones. I don’t have a lot of time but I always bury them, and I always do something for them.

Dublin goes dispassionately on. This beautiful, terrifying, packed with limitless possibility and peril chronic-town chug-a-chugs on, a locomotive barreling down the tracks, with neither deviation in schedule nor pause for fallen.



They vanish, unnoticed, unsung.

I blow the horn for them. Yank that cable down and let her rip.

I graffitied his name on an underpass in three vibrant shades of neon ten feet tall telling the world that Charles James Aubry was here. It may have been brief but, by God, he was here and will be remembered. If only by me.

He couldn’t stand the pain.

And I couldn’t save him from it.



* * *



π

I went straight to Chester’s after painting the underpass, and dashed up the stairs to Ryodan’s office when I didn’t find him below with the workers. I’d texted earlier, telling him I was fine and I’d be by around ten. He’s not a man you don’t text when he tells you to. He’ll come looking for you. And he’ll be pissed. I wasn’t in the mood to repair my door again. I still had to fix the elevator. And I hadn’t vacuumed in weeks. Shazam-hair was everywhere.

When the darkened glass panel whisked silently aside, I stalked across the glass floor that always makes me feel suspended in space, flung myself into the chair in front of his desk, kicked my feet over the side, and told him what I’d decided late last night—or rather near dawn this morning—with neither preface nor preamble.

“I think I’m becoming a Hunter.” I leaned back and waited for him to deny it. I didn’t actually think it myself. It was absurdly far-fetched. I was, however, quite certain I would turn completely black at some point. Still…the vision I’d had at the club last night seemed like…I don’t know, an invitation of sorts, and I wanted to bounce my worst-case scenario off someone who would laugh and tell me that was ridiculous. I wasn’t turning into one of those icy black demons with eyes like gates to Hell, no matter how benign it had appeared in my vision, sailing along next to me. To hear him say he knew a spell, a ward, or a charm that would make my deadly skin go away, because, by God, Ryodan knew everything.



Criminy, he was beautiful this morning. Tall and dark, freshly showered and shaved, smelling good. Looking powerful and ridiculous behind that stuffy desk. He belongs on a battlefield. Like me.

He said flatly, “You think?”