“The Nightwise could really use you, Laytham,” Lauren said, “seriously.”
“Darlin’, with my reputation, I’d be more of a hurt than a help,” I said. “Half the order still want me dead or banished for all the other shit I did do over the years.”
“You summoned the Brilliant Badge,” she said. “You showed everyone you still believe in the cause, in what the order stands for. They’ll forgive in time.”
“Or maybe I just figured out a way to hack the ritual,” I said with a smug grin. “Maybe the Brilliant Badge is no match for the ratfuckery of Laytham Ballard.”
“You are so full of bullshit,” she said. Then I saw a little doubt cross her face. “You … are bullshitting me, right?”
“I got a plane to somewhere to catch,” I said.
“If you change your mind,” Lauren said, “you know how to find me.”
“If you need me … on a consulting basis, you holler,” I said. “I’m going to miss you both.”
“Not if you stay,” Anna said. Dragon nodded as the three of us held each other’s hands.
“You don’t have to keep running away,” Dragon said. “You have something here…”
“… Something real,” Anna finished. We got a few looks as we kissed each other. I could care less, there was only the three of us. It almost felt like it used to. I was the one to let go of their hands, to step away.
“I gotta go,” I said.
“You really don’t,” Dragon said.
“You run long enough, you forget how to stop,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“That much running is exhausting,” Anna said. “When you need to rest, you’ll come home.”
“I will,” I said. It felt like a lie when I said it. I wanted to say the part I hadn’t said thirty years ago, the most important part, the part Joey regretted never having said one more time, the part that should always be the words on your lips, even after good-bye. I tried and they saw me struggle. Anna smiled. It was a little sad and it reminded me of how Caern had looked at me.
“We love you too,” she said.
* * *
I took my first-class aisle seat. The guy in the window seat gave me a guarded smile. He looked like a corporate trainer type, someone who spent most of his week in the air or in hotels. He already had earbuds at the ready to wall himself off from the rest of the world, which was fine by me.
We got underway and I felt myself sink deeper into my seat as the plane lifted. The trainer put on his music and entered his own little world. I envied him that. Once in the air, the flight attendant began making her rounds, getting drink orders.
The grid of lights below, the city proper, and all the towns and cities that huddled around her would eventually give way to the deep desert, to yawning desolation. I remember coming to L.A. so long ago, passing over deserts for the first time. I thought they were beautiful. Now they just looked empty and vast.
I was alone, again, just the way I wanted it. I had no idea where I was going when I got off this plane, no purpose, no reason, but I had been in a big goddamn hurry to get here. Running was exhausting, especially when you brought the thing you were running from with you wherever you go. At least I knew how to put it to sleep. I gestured for the attendant.
“Scotch and soda,” I said.
I was burning for this drink. I had been holding off for so long, so many weeks, maybe months? I had been so desperate not to fuck up again, at first to prove Gida wrong about me, then, after Caern, to minimize, to atone for the damage I create. But now there was no one to disappoint but me, no one to fuck up or damage or kill but me. I was running again, running above the night, through it, and I could feel the desolation approaching, the desert inside and out.
The attendant was returning, and I dug in my pockets for some fake plastic to buy the booze. I fished out my wallet, and with it came Garland’s seashell. It was tiny in my palm.
When you’ve walked the desert so long you no longer really see it, when you’ve wandered darkness with no light, no warmth, what do you do when you suddenly discover a tiny burning ember still exists in you? Do you stoke it, try again to make the crossing, knowing more likely than not you’ll fail, fuck up like you have again and again and again? Or do you snuff it out, put it out of its misery, and stay in the dark and the cold that’s come to be your comfort, your banner, your nation?
The shell was small. Garland was so happy when he handed it to me, not a fucking clue about what I really am, and what hell I had damned him to, what he’d suffer because of me for the rest of his life. He saw a different me than I would ever see, would ever know. He believed in that me, like Grinner, and Anna and Dragon did, like Torri and Magdalena had. Time wears our crystalline selves—our hopes and aspirations, our dreams, and our better natures—down to sand. In time, this shell in my hand would be dust.
The attendant returned and offered me the drink. I closed my fingers around the little shell. I couldn’t see it, but I felt it. I remembered the half-assed promise I made to that little boy, to be good. I looked at the drink in the plastic cup and licked my
