Page 71 of The Turning of the Tables

“Yeah?”

“You can always talk to me. If you need to.”

“Thanks.”

I hung up, dropped the phone, and put my face in my hands, letting the tears run between my fingers. Noah was at work, so I let the sobs shake themselves loose.

I didn’t nap.

And I didn’t feel any better.

By dinnertime,my congestion and cough were worse, and the very thought of food made my stomach feel sour. Noah had tried to coax me with some saltines, but even smelling them made me feel ill.

I didn’t text Elliot, even though I wanted to.

“You need to eat, Sethy,” Noah told me.

I shook my head. “I can’t.”

“You should try,” my brother insisted.

“I’ll just throw it up,” I retorted.

“You don’t know that,” Noah argued. Which, okay, Ididn’t. I hadn’t thrown up yet because I’d refused to eat anything today. But I was ninety percent sure that if I did eat the damn crackers, they were going to come back up in ten minutes or less. But I was also nauseous enough that I also didn’t want to argue with him, because even the pressure of my diaphragm on my stomach from speaking made it worse.

So I just glared at him.

He didn’t glare back, exactly, but the look he did give me was absolutely designed to make me feel guilty. Or maybe he was just trying to communicate his worry as a way of showing me that he cares. But I know Noah loves me. He doesn’t have a choice, any more than I have a choice about loving him. We’re twins. He’s my other half, just as I am his.

Not the same way that people talk about it with their soul mates. At least, I don’t think so. I’d never had that kind of relationship. One where I felt like I’d found the perfect person. I’d thought that Devin was the man I’d end up settling down with, but I’d never thought of him as a soul mate. I guess I’d always figured I didn’t have one.

What I had with Noah was different—it was in our blood. Noah and I have been a pair since I was born, ruining his only-child status after only an hour. I’d been a surprise—or, rather, Noah’s small size had been a surprise, which had been explained about ten minutes after he was born when my mother’s labor didn’t stop and the midwife they’d employed to help her had listened and heard a second heartbeat. Why they hadn’t noticed that there were two of us before then, I had no idea, although I strongly suspected that their religious opposition to modern medicine probably had quite a bit to do with it.

Noah was my other half because we’d always done everything together, despite the best efforts of our parents,who didn’t think that it was appropriate for us to share a room or participate in the same kinds of sports or clubs. But we’d never cared, ignoring their rules, social convention, and the arguments of our teachers.

I joined choir, Noah hung around on the soccer field until they let him play. I learned how to knit—badly. Noah took up weightlifting. I cooked, Noah mowed the grass. By the time we were in junior high, everyone in our small Appalachian town took for granted that the Mays twins just went everywhere and did everything together. Including leave.

The only things we hadn’t shared were my Lyme and alpha-gal and his Arcanavirus.

I guess I was working on that last one. I didn’t feel like I was dying, and I didn’t feel like I was going to suddenly lose control of my own musculosketeletal system. Yet.

It was only day one. Two, if I thought the slight off-ness I’d felt yesterday was actual sickness and not just anxiety about getting sick. Or anxiety about emotionally dumping on Elliot. Or anxiety about Tierney, who was still hospitalized. Or Maza, Aimes, Lombardi, and poor Schitikova, all of whom also had symptomatic confirmed Arcana. Or rage about the killer having succeeded in infecting a bunch of us, which also meant that none of us were working on catching him.

I assumed the case had been passed off to someone else—hopefully someone competent. I wanted to be part of it. Wanted to see it through.

But as much as I wanted to be part of closing the case, catching the asshole who was doing this, I also wanted them to catch him before I got back. Because if they didn’t, then more people were going to die and more people would be infected. And then they’d have to pass it off again…

“Shit,” I breathed.

“What?” Noah asked, and I blinked, having gotten so lost in my own head that I hadn’t realized he was still there.

“Something for work,” I answered. “Something I need to tell someone.”

“Seth, you need to rest,” my brother told me.

“I know. And I will. I just need to send a text.” If I didn’t, it would drive me up the wall, and I’d get even less rest than I was already going to get.

Noah huffed, then put down the plate of crackers. “I’m going to get you some 7Up,” he said.