Page 122 of Dead Vengeance

Liam’s head is locked onto that door, so I drop a hand on his arm to reassure him. “If it could get in, it already would have.”

He stares a moment longer. He’s pale, looks shaken, which is fair enough, really. He’s not used to scary stuff like this yet.

I watch the air expand his ample chest, naked beneath that one strap he’s lashed across his shoulder. Then, to my great shock—disbelief—Liam starts for the door.

I snatch a hand around his biceps. “What are you doing? We’re safe in here!”

“I need to go out there.” Shaking, his hand slides into his pocket, and he takes out the gun.

“No, stop. Stop right there.” I charge in front of him, physically holding him back with both hands. “We need to rethink this. All of it. We didn’t know what we were dealing with before—”

“That thing’s got my brother.” His eyes harden with the declaration.

A gaping hole opens in the pit of my stomach at the surety in his voice. “You don’t know that.”

“It has.” His voice breaks, just for a moment, but comes back steelier, more determined. “It has, and it’s making me relive it. His death, over and over. Because he’s there. Jem’s there, and it showed me what happened to him.”

He takes another step, so I brace him with my body, taking fingertips to his cheek to catch the tear that’s escaped, my brain stumbling to catch up with what he’s saying. Why this? Why now? What have I missed? “You can’t trust it,” I throw out. “Whatever it showed you the other night—”

“And yesterday.” He drops the words like a bomb, finally meeting my eyes, but his are distant, as if he’s looking straight through me. As if he’s seeing something else entirely. “It showed me yesterday, before I left…” A trembling hand runs through his hair as he averts that stony gaze.

I knew it. I knew there was more to this story. But this isn’t the time to think on why he couldn’t trust me enough to tell me—what I could have done better. All that comes later. “What did it show you?”

“His death,” he replies. “It showed me his death. It showed me how he died.” Liam swallows, fighting down his emotion, then his hand lands on my chest, fingers digging into the fabric. This time his eyes are clear and vulnerable, pleading. “Archer, I didn’t want to ask you. Because what you told me today—I’m not like those other people. I’m not a man who wants to ask you to do tricks for me. I would never use you like that…”

His pain is so close and so real, right at the surface. Everything he’s been through the last five years. Everything laid out right here in front of me about what this brief, sweet thing between us means to him too. It’s the same chance for him that it is for me. The same one shot in a million that we’ve come together somehow.

“But…” he says, and I can see it in his eyes, oceans of sadness, a risk he needs to take. “Is he dead? That’s all I want to know. I won’t ask another thing of you. Is he really gone?”

My heart breaks in about fifty different ways. This thing, precious between us, that he’s scared of shattering, which makes it clear he just doesn’t understand what he means to me yet. How much I’d do for him. How, if I could, I’d give him that answer and so much more.

But a thousand complications jump in front of it reaching my lips. How much do I hurt him right now if I tell him his brother is dead? What if I’m wrong? What if Tezcatlipoca is tricking him? What if he’s tricking me too? What if Liam does something stupid because I break his heart? So many problems that I can’t even articulate, swarming all around me like a hive of wasps.

But that pain in Liam’s eyes. It’s that not knowing that’s traumatised him the most all these years.

“I believe he’s dead.” My words are as soft as I can make them and to the point.

Liam holds my gaze a moment longer, then his tears brim over, and his head falls to my shoulder. I wrap my arms around him and hold him through it, his shoulders shaking, one hand sliding up my back to pull me close.

“I’m so sorry, Liam. I’m sorry. I can’t guarantee it. I don’t know with absolute clarity. But I do think what we saw the other day was his ghost.”

His head shakes as if he could deny the reality of it.

I stroke a hand over his hair. “But listen, I can help you. I want to help you. We will get to the bottom of this. Please, let’s just get out of here safe and sound, and then we’ll plan our next steps. We’ll make a good plan. Together. We’ll work through this, then piece all the bits together.”

His breathing stays laboured, ripping through him as he tries to talk. “And get revenge?” When he lifts his face, a look of savage defiance lights those gentle eyes I’ve come to adore. “Get revenge for my brother? Because someone killed him. I know they did now. Tezcatlipoca showed me. He showed me the whole thing, start to finish, my brother getting shot in the head by these… these men. And his blood…” He breaks off again, swimming through the horror of whatever he’s seen.

Revenge. Of course it’s what he wants. Justice. And who better to help him get that than…

Than a necromancer who does this for a living…

My fingers curl around his biceps as the idea dawns on me.

It’s too precise. Too perfect.

Something new sweeps over me. All the abhorrence, disgust and fear for what Liam’s going through, but beneath it, a new question, pumping endlessly like a vein in my forehead. “Why would he show you that?” Trying to sort through my knot of thoughts, I continue aloud, “Why would it want you to know that, and not me?” Liam raises his eyes, sad, hurt, barely following, his urgency growing with every second of my meandering. “I only know that when I talk to spirits, sometimes they tell me things. And… and then I have to tell their loved ones. Where to find them. Afterwards.”

He studies me, the idea turning over. “You think he… You think Jem wants me to know?”