Summer Sons(104)

“Okay,” he said slowly, holding Sam’s judging stare.

“If he passed the curse on, like you implied, you’re the … carrier, I guess?”

“No shit,” Andrew said.

“Then I think maybe we need to go out to Townsend, to your estate,” Riley said.

“No chance.”

“Hear me out.” Riley paced closer with cautious deference. Sam crossed his arms. Riley laid the back of his hand on Andrew’s forehead, swaying on his feet with his brow scrunched like a television psychic. After another second passed he let his hand drop and continued, “I’m not hot shit at the sixth-sense stuff, but that thing is eating you alive. Your aura is like a broken bone, it hurts to look at, and it’s getting worse all the time.”

Sam lowered himself to sit on the other end of the couch and wedged his foot under Andrew’s thigh. With them crowded in close and human he breathed easier, the atmospheric pressure crushing his chest lessening by degrees.

“It has gotten worse,” he admitted.

“What if it’s getting worse because you’re ignoring the whole thing? You could embrace it, like the book says Elias did, and get control,” Riley said with an animated gesture toward the hills outside. “We go to the old place, you commune with the land or whatever needs doing to set all the broken parts whole, and then—maybe once you’ve got your death power on lock, you use it to ask Eddie who killed him or something?”

Before Andrew could process the absolute revulsion he felt at Riley’s suggestion, Sam grabbed his forearm and turned it over to show the scabs. “No, fuck no. Look at these. You think asking for more of the same is going to help? The story said this gift drove the Fulton guy off the fucking deep end.”

Riley huffed. “I think we’re running short on time, and it might eat him before we find out who killed Eddie, so we gotta find a solution that solves both problems.”

Getting rid of the curse entirely, Andrew thought, would solve his problem. Eight long summers had passed since the cavern, since his life leaching into the earth with Eddie’s blood in his mouth. The poetic circularity was compelling, that the thing he’d avoided at greatest length would continue to be the cause of his worst problems. He flexed his hand. His haunt pushed at him with increasing force, come home come home come home. When he listened to it—

Fluttering chill burst to life in his finger bones. Riley flinched away. Muscle and tendon rippled as he rolled his wrist to break Sam’s grip. Eddie had written that he felt stronger the closer he got to the land, but that he was still missing something that needed to be set into place. During his last haunt-dream, the revenant had shown him a decrepit estate and a locked room, invited him to pry loose the door. And at the same time, it had tried to stop his heart and had cut his wrists from stem to stern. Embracing his inheritance felt like accepting the grave. Sam twisted loose fingers into the hair at the crown of his head.

“I won’t do that,” he said. “It’s a goddamn trap.”

“Fine, shit,” Riley said. “Then what’s your plan?”

“Focus on Troth, find where her stories don’t line up. She’s got to be involved,” he said, tapping the monograph cover again.

“I’ll help,” Riley offered instantly.

“No,” Sam said. “Absolutely not.”

“Seriously, fucking quit that,” Riley said.

Andrew leaned forward against the burning grip on his scalp; Sam cinched his fist another fraction tighter, provoking a short, grunting gasp. Sensation helped settle him into his bones again, alive. Riley made an uncomfortable sound, but before he could respond to their affection, his phone rang—a charming melody of bell tones.

He answered with a hostile, curious, “Hi, West, this is Sowell speaking.” The frown morphed into a curled lip. He held out the phone and said, “Call for you, Andrew.”





28


“I’m in Dr. Troth’s office,” West said.

Andrew tapped the speakerphone icon and balanced the phone on his palm, saying, “Tell her hello from me.”

West continued, “She stepped out for a minute. I tried your phone but no answer. She’s pushing me to explain to her what you’re doing, and she seems mad. I don’t find the tone of this conversation pleasant, Andrew. Help me out here.”

Specks of color swam across his field of vision, pounding to the tempo of his heartbeat. He said, “Fuck it, tell her I said I’m going to drop out. That’ll get her off both of our backs, won’t it?”

“You’re sure I should pass that on?” he asked, voice flat through the phone line.

Riley made a violent throat-cutting gesture and sketched a set of negative slashes in the air—but Troth had given him the ring, with its nasty psychic rider. Her eagerness for him to retrace Eddie’s steps and report them to her might be sinister, or it might not, but it made her as good a suspect as he had to date. Plus, his radio silence had her pissed enough to involve a resistant third party once again, and that wasn’t normal.

Andrew was finished with letting things happen to him out of pure coincidence. He had a trap of his own to bait, this time; if she was involved, she surely wouldn’t let him slip from her grasp without a fight. Like she’d said, he was the heir now.