Chapter Fifteen
Tom
There was something wrong with the sun.
Tom threw a hand over his eyes, trying to block out the light. It was too bright—that was the problem. It was like a knife blade, entering through his eyeballs to pierce his brain. This wasn’t the soft early morning light that he was used to. How long had he been asleep?
It took a moment for him to risk opening his eyes again. It wasn’t just the light that was wrong. He had fallen asleep in a strange position, half-sitting, an unfamiliar blanket tucked around his body in a way he couldn’t have done himself. Through squinted eyes, he peered out not at the bedroom Callum had showed him to last night, with Alec carved into the wall beside the bed, but at the dent in the living room wall where he had thrown the toy car yesterday.
He looked around the room, wincing as his head began to throb at the movement. No sign of Callum or Leila.
He pushed himself to his feet. His stomach roiled at the effort. He put a hand over his mouth until he was sure he wasn’t going to throw up. So much for his morning run.
Just the effort of standing up increased the pounding in his head until he felt like he was in the front row at a rock concert. When he started to walk, it was as if the drummer was using his brain for a drum set. “Leila?” he called, and the sound ricocheted from one side of his skull to the other, leaving pain in its wake. “Callum?”
The last thing he remembered was pouring more vodka into his glass, singing some song about sailors. After that… nothing. No, not quite nothing. There had been a soft voice in his ears, and someone staggering across the room with him to the couch. Had Callum been there?
This morning his glass was gone, along with the bottle. Someone had cleaned up the evidence.
Where were Callum and Leila?
He threw open the front door, then squeezed his eyes shut a second later as the sunlight renewed its assault. He squinted out at the porch, and suddenly he didn’t care about the pain in his head, because there were Leila and Callum, alive and well and sitting on the steps, bent over a tattered paperback.
Tom forced his eyes open the rest of the way. He straightened his back and stretched his face into a smile he didn’t feel. “Good morning.”
Callum looked up from the book, his relief plain on his face. “I’m glad you finally woke up. I was getting worried.”
Unless it was Tom’s imagination, Callum was keeping his already-soft voice a degree quieter than usual, but it still felt like cymbals banging between his ears. He didn’t let himself react. If his suspicions were true, Leila had seen plenty of hangovers—and worse—in her years living with her mother. She would know how to recognize the telltale signs. Which meant he couldn’t afford to show those signs if he didn’t want to wreck his chances of getting her to trust him.
“Are you feeling better?” Leila asked.
Tom searched her voice for hidden meaning. Did she already know how he had spent last night, or at least suspect?
“I told her you couldn’t sleep last night,” Callum explained. “I explained that you wanted to make sure you were awake in case they came back, until I convinced you to get some sleep once you couldn’t keep your eyes open anymore.”
Tom shot Callum a grateful look. “I’m feeling much better,” he said, although he felt worse than he would have if he had stayed up all night sober. “Thank you.” He hoped Callum could tell that the thanks weren’t just meant for Leila, but also for Callum, for covering for him.
His voice, he could tell, sounded the same as ever, aside from the slight fuzziness of sleep. He sounded calm, centered, untouchable. If Aidan were here, he would be calling him “Buddha” again, and teasing him about how even a situation this bad couldn’t get to him. But inside, something felt… askew. When he tried to take in a deep breath, the snake rose up to coil around his lungs, constricting his breathing, constricting his thoughts. He tried to picture a stream flowing unhurried toward the ocean, a bud unfolding on a tree, but instead he saw Mary, lying too still in the doorway of his childhood home. She had Leila’s face.
They would come for her. And he could not, would not, accept it.
But he also couldn’t stop it.
It always ended this way. It always ended with him helpless, watching the people he loved get hurt, knowing he should have stopped it. Knowing he couldn’t stop it.
They would come for her. And when they did, he would—
His hands curled into fists. The snake coiled tighter.
Leila’s brow furrowed. “Are you okay?”
Tom gave her what he hoped was a convincing smile. “I’m all right. I’m still trying to wake up, that’s all. I’m not used to sleeping so late.”
Callum said something disparaging about people for whom getting up at some ungodly hour of the morning to go running, of all things, was their idea of a good time. Leila joined in, protesting the unfairness of how early school started every morning. Tom let their voices turn into background noise—painful background noise, making the throbbing in his head that much worse, but also comforting. Whatever happened, for now they were here, and they were safe.
But his head was still pounding, and his limbs still ached, a reminder of how he had spent the night. He managed to draw in a deep breath, but it brought him nothing but the smell of rotting leaves.
Why had he gotten drunk?
But as much as he wanted to tell himself that it didn’t make any sense, he knew that wasn’t true. Even in the harsh clarity of sunlight, he understood. His decision not to drink, his morning run, his meditation—was any of it actually worth anything? He wasn’t sure anymore. None of it had kept Leila out of danger. None of it had, in the end, banished the snake—only pushed it down for a while.
He stole a glance at Callum. Maybe even his prohibition against romance didn’t matter anymore. But in the next second, he looked away. Getting drunk last night had been bad enough. He wasn’t willing to let go completely.
Not yet.
A purely sensory memory invaded his mind. A kiss—no, not quite, but almost. A touch. Soft skin under his fingertips.
He looked over at Callum again, a question in his eyes. This time Callum met his gaze. But Callum quickly looked away, like there was something he didn’t want Tom to see.
His own voice echoed in his ears. I’m going to lose myself.
How much had he said last night? How much had he revealed?
Callum held up the box of cereal they had bought yesterday—some foul sugary concoction that Callum had insisted on. “There’s breakfast, if you want some. No milk, of course, but it tastes just as good on its own.”
The last thing Tom wanted to do was eat, but he knew from experience that he would only start to feel better once he got some food in his stomach. He started to take a seat on the steps between them, but a noise in the distance made him stop—a low growling at the edges of his hearing, too faint for him to make out, only just audible enough for his brain to register it as not right.
“Did you hear that?” he asked. Callum and Leila shook their heads.
He was ready to write it off as an effect of the hangover, but in the next instant it returned, louder and louder, until it clarified into the familiar sound of a car engine. In the next instant, the car appeared, sleek and black, rounding the final twisty curve of the driveway.
Clarity rushed back into Tom like a tidal wave, the pounding in his head forgotten, the last of his fuzziness swept away. “Get inside,” he told Callum and Leila.
Callum hustled Leila inside, but let the door close behind her without going in himself. “Maybe I can talk to them,” he said, his voice only shaking a little. “If I—”
“Get inside!” Tom yelled. Startled into action, Callum disappeared through the door.
The car stopped. The driver’s side window opened.
When the first shot came, Tom was already on the ground. Before the man could fire a second time, Tom was on him, tearing the car door open, wrenching the gun from his hand. Taken by surprise, the man didn’t put up much of a fight. He only began to resist once Tom, after tossing the gun into the empty backseat and out of reach, hauled him out of the car. But Tom had the advantage, and there was only so much his would-be assassin could do against him as he punched him into the ground.
As Tom’s fist met yielding flesh, he saw Leila trapped in some little room somewhere, her face wet with tears.
His fist connected again. Leila morphed into Mary, unmoving as Tom tried to shake her awake.
Again. The snake tightened around him again, but this time it felt like freedom.
Again.
Again.
And then there were hands on him, pulling him back. A voice filled his ears, soft and warm, speaking static that turned to words. “It’s okay, Tom. He’s unconscious. You can stop now. It’s okay.”
Tom let his arms fall limply to his sides as Callum held him.