“Why does my lawn look like something off the Sci-fi channel?”
Mason didn’t turn to her voice, Skylynn did. She gave her that ‘I’m so glad you’re still alive’ smile that she’d carried since Indie walked out of the fire.
“They’re proving that you are indeed the Queen of the Veil.”
“I thought my deal was with the supernatural dead?” Indie said with wide eyes as she moved closer. The dead were stopping at the twelve-foot brick fence that went around the property, but the balcony was high enough to see them in the distance.
“It is, but they can’t reach The Reaper, so they’re following the pull to you.”
“Is he like on vacation or something.” Okay, bad joke. But seriously, what was I suppose to do with these ghost?
“Not in a good way,” Skylynn said so quietly Indie scarcely heard her.
“Any clue on how to redeem the supernatural dead? Two popped in earlier.”
“I heard,” her voice cracked.
Indie glanced at Mason’s back. His head was hung low; if she didn’t know better, she would think he was grieving. All she could assume was maybe he wasn’t dealing with the transition as well as she thought he was.
“You set it up for this decoder to come here,” right as Indie said that Mason tensed. Odd. “So, do you think any of the text will help me get you out of this shadowed thing?”
“It’s possible. There is no telling what’s down there.”
“What about—”
Skylynn halted Indie’s words with a lift of her brow. “I have to go,” she said nodding back at Mason as if to clue Indie in that he was not right. “And check on a few things. I’ll pop back in a bit, and we can figure out what to do about your lawn furniture, they’re not coming in here. I know that much.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Indie said, but Skylynn vanished before the words came out.
Indie stood there for a second or two, just watching Mason. He hadn’t looked like this since she first met him. He was broken then, they both were.
She eased her way to his side and nudged him with her shoulder. That usually made him smile, not so much right now.
“What’s on your mind?”
No response, apparently someone had edged an epic novel in the stone banister, at least he was staring at it with the same intensity.
“I heard you knew our guest.”
Tense. Rock. Hard.
“That awesome huh,” she said to him as her eyes raced across his image. “Look, if this is hard or something, I’ll fix it. Find another one.”
“River is the best.”
“You could have told me you knew her instead of having Gavin telling me that Skylynn deal.”
“That wasn’t a deal that was the truth, as far as I know. I didn’t know River was coming until I found her in the snow.”
“What was up with that?”
“I don’t know, neither does Skylynn. You’ll have to ask River.”
Interesting.
“But you trust her? You said she was the best.”
He smirked, that sinful boyish smirk Indie loved so much. “If River decides to do something then she’s going to do it right. Her family is legit. They know how to keep things in the family. If I knew this was her gig, I would’ve suggested her.”
Okay apparently they are not current, Indie thought. She was sure you didn’t just learn to decode text overnight. She assumed that maybe this woman was an old teacher of his or something. She had gotten the impression she was young by the way Ben was talking, but nothing surprised Indie anymore.
“Have you checked on her?”
Nothing.
“You’re avoiding her.”
Indie knew what that meant. Too many emotions. He avoided her for a week or so after they split the first time.
“I don’t want her to bail on you when she figures out I stay here.”
“Calling BS on that.”
There was that smirk again along with a shake of his head.
“It has been a while,” he said as he started to trace the stone under his hands.
His stare moved out to the dead that were acting like the manor was about to put on an epic concert.
“Do you really think my brother moved on? I mean, you don’t think he’s like that, right?”
Oh, this just got deep.
“The way Skylynn explained it to me, yeah. He looked happy.”
One nod.
“Why?”
He clenched his jaw before he spoke. “That would just be a cruel irony,” he continued and clenched his fists. “River…River was the girl.”
Now Indie was the one who was tense. “From the Quarter?”
One nod.
“Mason that’s all I know. A girl from the Quarter that broke your heart.”
His eyes met hers instantly. “I told you that?”
“Assumed. You didn’t really tell me about her until after we split. And that was only because I wanted to watch a movie, and you refused to let me. I asked why and you said that movie was yours and someone else’s,” she moved her hand down his back. “Your eyes told me she broke you.”
“The Crow,” he said as the memory came to him.
Indie had no idea, that was years ago, and she would swear she had every movie ever made available in the theater on the third level.
“You want to talk about it?”
He raised his head, let out a deep breath as he stared out at the dead. “It was tough when my parents split. They fought over us like we were furniture at first. Swapping us back and forth across state lines.”
As long as Indie had known Mason they’d never talked about this stuff, mainly because it meant they would have to talk about his twin, they tried not to talk about who they lost.
“Braxton could not handle my mother, at all, so for the first bit, like around sixth grade, he went down there with Dad, even went to school there. Met a girl whose family was in the same cov—group our grandparents were in.” Mason cleared his throat. “He um, he talked about her all the time. Every day I called him, and all he would talk about was her. He fought not to switch back, but my mom was pretty set on getting her way, so, yeah, we switched up.” A painful smile came to him. “It wasn’t hard to figure out why he didn’t want to switch.”
“Because of River,” Indie assumed.
One nod.
“God, Indie, I was like fourteen or fifteen when I met her, and I swear to you it was like I took a breath for the first time. I woke up. Like really woke up. Livewire. Every part of me was wayyyyy too aware of her. I tried to keep my distance. I really did. I knew Braxton had it bad for her, but one day she flat-out asked me why I was avoiding her, why I wouldn’t look her in the eye,” he stopped, his breath caught as if the memory had sucked him back to that moment.
“She, ah, she said her and Braxton had pulled the friend card a while before then. It took us a while, but we finally told him,” his fist clenched. “To everyone else he was cool with it, even made jokes about it.”
“Not to you, huh.”
He shook his head. “River and I were hooked up for over two years, and he was still ticked at me when he died.”
“I doubt that.”
“I don’t,” he said as his eyes met Indie’s. “What do you think we were fighting about two seconds before the accident?”
“Her?”
“I didn’t want Mom and Dad to get back together because my Mom would make us live here. He wanted our family together. That argument led to him telling me I stole River and that if she were his he would still want our family together.”
“That was just all of it, though, it wasn’t just her, or you,” Indie defended.
“No. I was killing him by loving her. I was hoping against all hope that my family would split so I could be with her, and when it started to become clear that my parents had fallen back in love, I planned to run away. I was a selfish bastard. Maybe if I weren’t so ticked off, I would have moved us a few inches
, maybe not have caught that rapid.”
“Mason.”
He cursed under his breath as he turned.
“River had her own crap going on too, she was so sick. My brother was dead, and she was pretty much in the hospital, among other things. The world was upside down. We talked, on the phone, well kind of. I was a jackass at the time.”
“The distance killed it.”
“Nope.” His head slowly turned so that his eyes were peering into Indie’s. “You did.”
“What?”
“Not intentionally. That second time we hung out, River called, mom answered my line and told her I was out with my girlfriend, Indiana.”
“You dated me while dating her?” she was going to kill him.
He shook his head.
“She hadn’t called me in like days. I called to check on her, her sister told me what mom said. River wouldn’t talk to me.” He cursed again. “She knew my mom was not a fan of her, just because she was from the Quarter, that she should doubt her, but River believed her anyway. Wouldn’t talk to me. Her sister was lethal, and my cousin got sick of being in the middle. He’s tight with them like I think he lives with them now.”
He stood up a little straighter. “I took that as a breakup, me and you were partying a lot, and then just kinda happened. Never looked back, no sense in trying to.”
“Is the sister named Ash?”
That got his attention.
“She called me,” Indie explained. “Not long after I met you. She said she was a good friend from down there and wanted to check on you, that your mom was hard to read, and your were impossible.”
“You’re joking.”
Indie moved her head side-to-side feeling like she’d been duped. She was ninety-nine percent sure she was just as much at fault as his mom that he and that girl split for good. “You made me think about it when you said Indiana, that was the name Ash called me, I never corrected her.”
“What did she ask?”
“First time, if you were making friends or sulking, if you went out, where, and with who.” Indie grimaced. “My answer was yes to all, I told her it was me, you hung out with me. I was trying to make her feel better because she seemed for real worried. I mean we were hanging out here and there, but she could have easily taken what I said to mean that it was more than it was.”
Another curse. “Was that the only time she called?”
“No, one or two more times, like around your birthday and the holidays.”
“Yep, Ash, the investigator. She was trying to figure out if I deserved to be expelled from River’s life or if she needed to talk her twin down.”
“I never called you my boyfriend. I was just honest about hanging with you.”
“I was too,” the anger in his voice would make you think this just happened, like yesterday, then under his breath he said, “Accused of it might as well do it.”
“Does she know?”
“Know what?”
“That you’re still in love with her,” Indie nudged him. “That you were an ass because of your grief, but you’ve worked through it.”
“Yep, I put that on the Christmas card I sent her.”
Indie elbowed him, and he tried to smile.
“It’s not your fault, or my mom’s. It’s no one’s, but mine.”
“Grief is no joke, Mason. You lost a twin.”
“Right. I lost him, then tried to destroy myself with partying and drinking.”
“We stopped,” Indie had to admit they were both out of control in the beginning. So much so that they crossed a few permanent lines and they only vaguely remembered doing so.
One nod from him.
“I didn’t go back, Indie. I’ve been over eighteen for a while. I could have at least gone to see my grandmother or somethin’.”
“You honestly think this deal with being a supernatural guardian didn’t keep you here? Before you play the martyr, think about what’s up with us now.”
Indie knew for a fact that Skylynn had altered circumstances for the boys to find their way to her. For all she knew the causalities were not completely considered which made Indie feel horrible. She’d always felt guilty about keeping her almost’s so close to her.
Life without Phoenix, without being able to touch and talk to the one that made her feel whole, was all too fresh in Indie’s mind. Knowing that Mason was feeling the same thing, and she’d never picked up on it made her feel like a horrible, self-centered friend.
“People only make excuses when they are too afraid to find a way,” Mason said, taking the blame. That’s the kind of guy he was. Called out the truth, even if it made him the guilty party.
“Mason, you knew if you went down there and looked her in the eyes you would never leave, and your soul knew we had whatever this is coming at us. Not an excuse, a hard choice.”
“Wanting and needing to be in two places at once,” he said so quietly, repeating words he’d heard River say in the past.
“Well, now it’s all in one place. If you think it’s a fluke, she’s here now then you’re delusional. Fate had its say. I wouldn’t ignore it. What was that theory of yours about pain? It only lasts for a second, then adrenaline comes to your defense?”
He dared to crack a smile. “Different kind of pain, but true that. I’ll figure it out. River wouldn’t bail on you. I just don’t want to make it hard on her.”
Right about then Phoenix appeared. Indie glanced over her shoulder and gave him a sad look. His brow tensed as he glanced between her and Mason then moved to Mason’s other side. The irony was crazy, it was like they were his parents, worried about him.
Phoenix’s dark gray eyes moved all around Mason. “Hey, Mate. You have to chill on those emotions; you don’t want to be depressed for the next eternity do you? I thought you were the fun one. Is your mum giving you hell? You need Skylynn to move into her dreams and give the idea to move to the North Pole or something?”
Mason laughed and shook his head as he stood from his lean. “I’m good. Going to blow off some steam.”
Before he could vanish, Phoenix grasped his arm. Indie couldn’t hear what he said to him even with her new senses, but the words seemed to wash over Mason, wake him up somehow. Phoenix let him go, and he was gone.
“What? Was that like some kind of boy pep talk?”
“In a way,” Phoenix said with a wink as his eyes slowly moved up and down Indie’s body.
“What?”
He let out a slow sigh. “You might want to change.”
She quirked a brow.
He nodded to the massive amount of dead souls hanging out at the gate. “I was informed that The Reaper would like to have us over for dinner.”
“I thought he was on vacation?”
That earned a crazy look. “Bad joke. For real what are you talking about?”
He moved a little closer to Indie, put one arm around her as his stare move to the gate. “Cashton, the bloke with Draven, gave me the invite.”
“He knows The Reaper, but he needs my help?”
“No, he has a few powerful buddies, though. The invite is genuine.”
“You’re being a little evasive,” Indie said as she stared up into his eyes.
He was doing his best to keep a light mood around Indie, but she knew him, could sense the tension—the urgency to move forward.
He ticked his head to the lawn. “Some text suggests that you have to have a massive movement to officially claim your reign. Meaning you have to take down a Lord of Death. The assholes causing traffic jams like the ones on our lawn.
“You don’t want that to happen?”
His eyes carefully searched hers before he spoke. “I don’t understand the course you’re on.”
“We. The course we are on.”
“I don’t understand it. If we could just live here, move the world like we planned, for as long as time stretched, I would be content, that would be my heaven. But, if you’re one of the Seven, which,” with a nod to t
he gate, “is becoming harder to deny, then we have a long road ahead of us, and at the end of it I’m not sure what to hope for.”
“This,” she said, as she moved against him. “This matters. We keep that focus, and we are going to be fine.”
He leaned his forehead to hers, as his hands clenched her waist. “This is the only place I want to be, it’s exhausting chasing everyone down to see what they know, where they are in their battles, figuring out how we connect.”
“They need you, though, you are the most aware of all, you’re in the same form.”
“Clearly I’ve lost a few memories or pushed them aside. I didn’t recognize souls when they popped back up in my life.”
He meant her boys and Skylynn. In his defense, they were pretty sure Skylynn was only at the manor a day or so in their old life. And the boys, he knows they were his baby cousins over there now, and before when she was fighting death all he could think about was that he’d found Indie only to lose her.
“You remember when you need to. You connect us all. I think being around me is going to help you remember the life over there more clearly. You blocked it because it hurt. Now it doesn’t.”
“No, it doesn’t,” he agreed as his nose swayed against hers. “Get dressed,” he said squeezing her sides. “We have an engagement at the throne of the Reaper.”
Chapter Six
River had a plan. It was after eight pm which meant all insanely rich people should either be out for the night, or at some fancy dinner and done for the day. Meaning she could sneak down to that library, read all night, crash for a few hours, read some more tomorrow, get the gist and catch a flight home before she crossed paths with any old heartaches, or creeper Lords of Death.
She’d changed her clothes three times before she pretty much ended up in the same dress she had on before, only she ditched the tights. Most times she went over documents in sweats or PJ’s, the more comfortable she was, the easier it was for her to let go and see the words.
She was nervous.
Fate had a cruel irony to it. If she had run across Mason in the Quarter, on her own territory, she would have been way cooler with it than she was now. She had even daydreamed the scenario more times than she could remember. Here? Here she was out of her comfort zone. She had no backup, no family, and no familiar places to hide. She was the one out of sorts.