Unraveled

Please don’t tell me you’re listening to Caleb now, Julian snapped. We’ve got work to do.

Yeah. Sexy work.

You are such a pervert.

Boys. Elijah sighed. Is arguing necessary? Now?

Looked like Elijah had taken over the role of mother hen now that Eve was gone.

“Aden,” Victoria repeated, drawing him back to the present.

He ground his teeth, irritated with himself. His concentration sucked, even in times of great danger. “Call me later,” was all he said, still unwilling to explain while Thomas could hear.

“I’ll do more than that. I’ll return for you this evening.” Victoria grabbed Riley’s hand before the wolf could protest. “My family wishes to meet you, and their wishes are not something you can ignore.”

With that, the two were gone.

A second later, Thomas vanished, as well. A second after that, the souls inside of Aden gasped, as they always did when Mary Ann muted them, fading from his mind, falling into the black hole they’d once told him about.

They despised that black hole, but they didn’t complain. They loved Aden. They wanted him happy, and they knew these private moments were necessary.

As necessary as letting them go, he thought, guilty again.

Aden sank to the ground, his back sliding against the wall. Yeah, he was going to have to set them free, no matter how much he might want to keep them. First, though, he had to figure out exactly who they had been as humans. Then he had to help them finish whatever was keeping them bound to the earth. To him.

That’s how he’d lost Eve. Once he’d given her what her human self had wanted most—a day with her daughter—she had disappeared in a snap.

So much to do, he thought. Overwhelming. First up, it seemed, was meeting Victoria’s family. The sisters he’d already seen in that vision. Laurel and…no, that wasn’t right. He wracked his brain. Their names remained just out of reach.

“Is the fairy…” Mary Ann began.

“Yeah. He’s gone.” But most likely, Thomas would return the moment Mary Ann left the ranch. What would Aden do then? He couldn’t keep her here all day and all night.

“Good. Now don’t take this the wrong way, okay?” She walked to the bed and threw herself on the mattress, bouncing up and down. “But you really need a shower.”

He glanced down at himself, heat blooming in his cheeks. Streaks of blood decorated his chest, and sweat had dried his boxers to his skin. “The bathroom is down the hall. Will you stay here? I’ll hurry.”

“I’ll stay,” she said with an impish grin. “Now, less talking and more showering.”

As weak as he was, he had to use the wall to unfold from the floor and stand. And while digging through the closet for clothes, he fought wave after wave of dizziness. Finally, though, he was in the bathroom, having managed to stalk down the hall without running into any of the other boys, hot water streaming down his body, cleaning him inside and out.

His first private shower, he mused. He wondered how far Mary Ann’s ability stretched—and he wished he could enjoy the solitude more. Yeah, really enjoy it. Instead, he had to hurry as promised.

When he finished, he dressed in a T-shirt and jeans and headed back to his bedroom. Just before he reached the door, the scent of peanut butter sandwiches drew him into the kitchen. There was a tray piled high with them, but no boys in sight. They should be here, studying.

You killed their teacher, remember?

Sad and guilty once again, Aden confiscated two of the sandwiches, eating each in two bites, and searched the rest of the bunkhouse. All the chores were done, so the boys had been here. The wood floors were polished, the oak table and scuffed chairs dusted. The walls were scrubbed clean and smelled of soap.

A few months ago, those walls had been filled with horseshoes and pictures of the ranch as it used to be a hundred or so years ago when it had first been built. But then two of the boys had gotten in a fight, and one of them had used a metal horseshoe to bash up the other. Or so Aden had heard. Dan, the owner of the ranch and the guy in charge of their care, had taken everything down.

There was no sign of the boys anywhere. Were they okay? Where had—

Laughter suddenly rang out.

At the far window in the entryway, he brushed the curtains aside and looked out. An overcast sky fashioned a gray canopy over the D and M as the boys played football in the field between the main house and the bunkhouse.

Aden experienced a momentary pang of jealousy. Once, that’s all he’d craved. Friends, games. Acceptance. Now he finally had it, for the most part, but he also had a little too much on his plate to enjoy it.

“You’re gonna get into trouble,” he told them, even though they couldn’t hear him. Dan wasn’t here—his truck was gone—but Meg, his wife, rarely left the main house, and she would report what had gone on.

But no tutor, no studies, Aden supposed, and his guilt increased. Dan was going to have to find a new tutor, having no idea why Mr. Thomas had “left” as suddenly as he’d appeared.

Aden liked Dan. Respected him. A lot. The man was honorable and truly wanted to give the boys here a better life. Yet time and time again, Aden made his life more difficult. Don’t think about that now.

Back in his bedroom, Aden found that Mary Ann was still on the bed, though she was propped against the headboard and reading one of Shannon’s books. The door clicked shut behind him—no lock, though, since Dan had removed them—and she looked up.

“Much better,” she said with a nod.

“Thanks for staying.”

“My pleasure.” She set the book aside and straightened. “How are you feeling?”

“As good as I smell.”

She laughed exactly like he wanted Victoria to laugh. “That good, huh?”

“Sorry you had to stick around.”

“I didn’t mind. I wanted to talk to you about something, anyway.”

He sat at the desk, marveling that the room was perfect, nothing out of place. After Riley and Thomas had ravaged the entire building in that other dimension—which still freaked him out—he’d expected some sign of what had happened. Yet there was nothing. Not even a speck of blood.

“Are you listening to me?” Mary Ann asked with another laugh. “I thought the souls were quiet when I was with you.”

He grinned sheepishly. “Sorry. I’m so used to being inside my head, I often get lost in there.”

“Well, I was saying that you know how to fight.”

“Yeah.” He should. He’d been fighting his entire life. Other mental patients, doctors, other foster kids. Zombies that Julian, the corpse whisperer, raised from eternal slumber.

“Well,” Mary Ann said, squaring her shoulders. “I want you to teach me.”

He arched a brow, not sure he understood. “You want me to teach you how to kick as—uh, how to fight?”

“How to defend myself and how to attack, yes.”

There was a big difference in what people needed to do to defend themselves and what they needed to do to attack someone else. A big, dangerous difference. “Riley won’t like it.”

She shrugged, swirling a finger along the cotton comforter. “He’ll have to get over it. I need to do this. I don’t want to be a liability anymore.”

That, Aden understood. Perfectly. “I’ll teach you.”

She clapped as if he’d just told her she’d won the lottery. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure,” he said, mirroring her earlier words. “So when do you want to start?”