It wasn’t exactly normal anymore—cursed and scared and on a knife-edge—but it still felt simple. That might be the best that Jonah could do. Maybe it would have to be enough.
Luke broke the kiss but didn’t draw away. He rested his forehead against Jonah’s, his eyes closed tight, and his eyebrows pinched together.
“Thank you,” he said. His voice was thick and snotty, caught on his tongue. “I didn’t know if you’d come back for me again.”
Jonah reached up and brushed a bit of Luke’s hair away from his forehead. His fingers lingered for a second. He could make it normal, right? Just because this is how it started didn’t mean it had to stay like this…
… if they didn’t die.
“It would have been easier if you’d left a number,” he said.
Luke laughed, a wet hiccup of sound, and stepped back. He scrubbed his eyes on the heels of his hands to dash away any stray tears.
“Yeah,” he said. “How did you find me anyhow?”
The thought of Shiloh filled Jonah’s mind, the rasp of his voice and the shape of his mouth as pain and magic throbbed under Jonah’s skin. His fingers twitched, and he touched the scabbed-up palm of his hand absently. Heat crawled under his skin, and that would never be normal or simple or ordinary.
It definitely wasn’t what Jonah should want. It was a real shame logic didn’t reach that far.
“Long story,” Jonah said after a guilty beat. “We can go over it later. Come on. We should go.”
Luke stared at him for a second, suspicion murky in his eyes. Then he nodded.
“OK,” he said. “Where?”
“Anywhere,” Jonah said. He felt something cold and wet lick his ankles, the slime of it against his skin, and he grabbed Luke’s arm. “We just need to move, stay ahead of her until we work out what to do next.”
Luke balked at being pulled toward the door. He dug his heels in and stepped back into the room.
“That’s the plan?” he said. “You’re just going to drive around town and hope we just don’t run into it? I thought you had a plan, that you knew what you were doing.”
That made the Carrow crawl up the back of Jonah’s throat and grit his molars until they creaked. Wallflowers bought hexes, they didn’t lay them. Anyone who stuck their arm shoulder-deep into death’s wet maw and pulled out power had to be sure of themselves to a neurotic degree.
Jonah choked down the “do you know who I am” that wanted to crawl out from between his teeth. No one was meant to, and five seconds ago, the fact that Luke definitely didn’t had been in his favor.
“I know what I’m doing,” Jonah said, his voice clipped despite his best intentions. “I’m getting in the car to stay ahead of the thing that’s snorted out your trail from under every wino and empty beer can between here and the police station. You can come along or not.”
Luke yanked his arm free and stood there for a second, his breath ragged and noisy in his chest. He opened his mouth to say something—yes, no, go fuck yourself.
Before he could, the wall behind him scabbed over. Something wet and ulcerous spread through the thin coat of paint that was layered over old brick. Mortar fell in crumbled chunks to the floor, wet and covered with mold blooms, and the sweet reek of spilled whiskey and dry rot filled the room.
The hag clawed through the wall, stripped down to the jerky and raw bone heart of itself. Closed doors could keep out a ghost, but not something sent. There wasforcebehind the thing that was being birthed dead from the wall.
Luke saw it in Jonah’s face first. He shut his mouth mid-word, confused, and turned to look at it. Once he saw it, he froze in place like a rabbit caught in headlights. His shoulders shook as he dragged in a thin, hitched breath.
Nemesis, his granny had called it. She’d claimed that to see your own fate set on your heels was a terrible thing.
It had certainly never done Ram any favors.
Jonah hesitated for a moment, just long enough to breathe in and catch the faded taste of Luke on his breath. Let the thing have Luke. If it killed him, that might be enough. It could just crawl back into the unmarked grave someone had hooked it out of. At least for another night, give Jonah time to work out how to hammer that coffin lid down for good.
Except he could taste whiskey when he swallowed, and he’dhurtthe hag last night. That was the sort of thing that lingered, even in a shell of rage and resentment.
Jonah scruffed Luke by the back of his borrowed T-shirt and dragged him out of the apartment. Once the hag wasn’t right in front of him anymore, Luke recovered enough to stagger up toward the first floor under his own steam.
If he could have, Jonah wondered, would he have left Luke behind? When it came right down to it, could he have just closed that door?
The hag’s scream echoed up the stairwell behind them.
Jonah didn’t know, but he supposed it didn’t matter now.
