“There’s something you need to know first. Before you do that. Before you do anything else, Shame.”
“Before I put on these socks? Because my feet are killing me.”
“Even before socks.”
We were almost to the bunk room. “Do not make me play twenty questions with you, because I will use my fists. Out with it.”
“It’s just, well, right there in front of you.”
I stepped into the bedroom area.
Right in front of me, about halfway across the room, stood a man. A little taller than me, good-looking with white hair pulled back in a band at the nape of his neck, he wore a plain white T-shirt, jeans and a smile.
“Terric?” I breathed.
He held his hands out to the side, and the corner of his mouth turned up in a smile.
For an aching moment, I wondered if I was seeing things. Seeing what I wanted, who I wanted. He could be a ghost—I certainly saw ghosts. He could be a hallucination—I certainly saw my share of those too.
But the way he held himself, his left shoulder hitched just a little higher than the right, his head tilted, was one hundred percent Terric.
One hundred percent real.
One hundred percent my brother, my Soul Complement standing there.
My heart kicked so hard I couldn’t breathe fast enough to keep up with it. My vision went a little dark at the edges.
“Hey, Shame,” he said, words I thought I’d never hear again, a voice I thought I’d never hear again. “Sorry for the box—”
He didn’t get a chance to say anything more. I strode across the room, grabbed him by the T-shirt, and pulled him into a tight hug.
“Jesus, Ter. You were dead,” I said, my arms locked around his shoulders, my heart thumping with a new kind of pain. I didn’t want this to be a dream or hallucination. I wanted, with everything I had, for this to be real.
He returned the embrace, leaning into me a bit as if surprised but grateful for the contact.
“So I’ve been told,” he said.
“I felt you die, Ter.” He was solid, warm, and real in my arms. I could smell the soap and medicine that clung to his skin. “You’re alive, right? Really alive?”
“I’m alive, Shame,” he said. “Right here. Real.”
“And you’re okay?” I unlocked my arms, moved back, the sleeve of his T-shirt still gripped in my fist. “Do you need a doctor? A hospital? Are you hungry?”
He knit his eyebrows, his glacier blue gaze searching my face. “I don’t need a doctor. I’m feeling fine. Considering what I heard happened to me.”
“You don’t remember?” I couldn’t let go of him. Not yet. I didn’t want him to disappear. His hand was still resting on my shoulder too.
“I remember some of it,” he said. “Of . . . us. Not the dying part.”
“Good,” I said. “Good. It’s better you don’t remember that. It was just blood and pain, you know, like you’d expect. Pain and dying. Bloody way to go. But boring.”
“And now you’re babbling,” he said. “Are you okay?”
The knife sliced his throat. There was blood, his blood, everywhere as he fell to the floor, Eli above him . . .
I pushed that memory away. Terric was standing here, smiling, in front of me. I was going to hold on to that for all I was worth.
“Me? Yes. Of course. I’m good, mate. Good. What’s the last thing you remember?”
“Dash.” He glanced over at Cody as if checking to see if he’d gotten the name right for the man we’d worked with for years.
Cody nodded.
That was my first clue that everything was not okay with Terric.
“Dash told me I was taken and tortured.”
This was Terric. Real, alive Terric. Felt like Terric. Sounded like him, smelled like him. I knew he was real.
But there was something about him, a sort of guarded pain he was carrying.
“You don’t remember that. That’s okay. What do you remember?”
“Not much,” he said, finally letting go of my shoulder. “They think I was Closed.”
Son of a bitch.
I glanced at Cody. “Think?”
“We haven’t had a lot of time to deal with it yet,” he said. “We thought it was important to get you two together as soon as possible. If he was Closed, it was a botched job.”
“It’s like Swiss cheese in here,” Terric said, pointing at his head. “I do remember some things. My parents. You. Victor.” He smiled. “I thought maybe we could talk to him about how I was Closed. He might have some idea how to deal with it.”
He didn’t even remember Victor was dead. That Eli had killed him. That we hadn’t been able to save him before Eli tore him apart with his bare hands.
“I don’t think,” I said before the memory of Victor, and the still-fresh grief of losing him cut off my breath. “No,” I finished. “I don’t think we can talk to him about this. Are you . . .” I looked away to Cody again. “. . . is he all right?”
“He’s standing right here,” Terric said. He patted my shoulder just in case I hadn’t heard him. “Do you want to sit down maybe?”
I realized I was still holding on to his shirt like a little kid who was afraid to get lost in a crowd. “Sorry,” I said, unwadding my grip and letting my hand fall to my side.
“It’s okay.” He tipped his head down just a bit to catch my gaze. “It’s nice to be missed.”
Ah, Terric, I thought. You don’t know the half of it.
“You were,” I said. “Missed. Place went to hell without you.”
“I can see that. You’re wearing a monkey shirt. A very yellow monkey shirt.”
“I’ll be killing Sid for that later,” I said.
“See,” Cody said, “I told you it would work, Shame.”
“What would work?” Terric asked.
I threw Cody a dirty look, but he hadn’t been intimidated by me since . . . well, never.
“It’s nothing,” I said. “You know how Cody is.”
“Shame killed you,” Cody said.
I tipped my head back and closed my eyes, exhaled the flash of anger. “Goddamn it, Miller.”
“Killed me,” Terric said. “Shame?”
He thought it was a joke. Probably because Cody was the one who had said it and Cody hadn’t always been the most reliable guy back in the day.
I lowered my gaze until I was looking Terric straight in the eye. “Cody’s telling the truth. You were barely alive. He thought the Life magic in you wouldn’t let you go, but wasn’t strong enough to bring you back either. Maybe coma, maybe just years of dying, suffering . . .”
I cleared my throat. “So I did. I . . . killed you. I let Death take you down.”
“You killed me,” he said flatly.
“Yes.”
“And that’s what brought you back,” Cody said. “Death triggered Life magic to put you back together, to raise you from the ashes. You crazy Soul Complement kids can break all the magic rules.”
“All right,” Terric said slowly. “Fine. I’m alive. But if you killed me, then you owe me. Big-time, Flynn.”
“Anything,” I said.
He took a couple of steps back and ran his hand over his hair, dislodging tendrils that fell over his eyes. “That”—he pointed at me—“officially freaks me out.”
“What?” I said.
“Not that you look like a skeleton, have bruises and burns and cuts . . . everywhere and you don’t seem to feel them. Not that I’ve never seen you look so burned out, raw, on the edge.”
“Then what?” I asked again.
“How long have I been dead?”
“Not long.”
“Really? You’ve never given in so quickly on anything, Shame. Anything. You always put up a fight over every last damn detail of every last damn thing. And . . . and now you instantly promise me anything I want to make up for something you did, no questions asked? How long have I been dead?”