Page 38 of Remington’s Mate

She broke off as Callie elbowed her in the ribs. “You need to help me pick a new nail polish color for my toenails.” As Kitty glared at her, she mouthed, Bro time.

Remy rolled his eyes. “Nice. Very subtle.”

Colt came back with his boots. “He means, ‘thanks for realizing that subtlety is lost on this crew’, and also ‘thanks for respecting the bro time’.”

He dropped the boots one by one and stuffed his feet into them, not bothering to lace them. Then he grabbed Callie, bent her backward and planted a long smooch on her lips. “Later, babe.”

They didn’t say much on the way up the hill to the target range. It wasn’t that Remy couldn’t talk to his brother—they could talk about anything. It was just that they’d usually never needed to. They’d shared most of their experiences, and were so attuned to each other they understood a lot of the rest without being told.

Now he didn’t fucking know where to start. Finally he just blurted out, “I’ve been going to the spirit world without Squatch. A lot.”

Colt stopped in the middle of getting the throwing axes out of the storage bin. “Okay, that was not what I expected this to be about. Why the hell have you been screwing around with the spirit world?”

Remy tried to figure out where to start. Colt gathered up the throwing axes and brought them over to him. Remy threw them one by one into the target, burying them deep.

Finally he sighed and said, “My animals were fighting all the time, messing with me. Everything was out of control, and nothing was helping. And then, one time when I was there with Squatch, I saw this… woman. Except she wasn’t a woman.”

Colt went to the target and retrieved the axes. “You know you’re not making sense, right?”

Remy rolled his eyes. “Have you been to the spirit world? Nothing there makes sense.”

“Point taken.” Colt lined up his shot and threw the first axe. “So if it wasn’t a woman, what was it?”

“It was whatever I wanted to it to be, I think. Female snow leopard. Female snowy owl. Or maybe just whatever she wanted to be. Once she was a pale gray wolf, like a ghost, until I found her, and then she Changed to what I was. A leopard, that time.”

He remembered the feeling of being with her, and found himself wishing he had the talisman right then. “She was… amazing. Captivating.”

Colt paused in the middle of lining up his second shot. “Oh, fuck,” he said. “You fell in love with a ghost?”

Remy shrugged. Colt hurled the axe at the target. Bull’s eye.

“I don’t know about love,” Remy said. “More like obsessed. Squatch told me to stay away, that there were these things called halaikas in the spirit world, that lure you in. Trap you, until they suck out your life energy—your soul.”

“Awesome,” Colt said. “And, you thought it was a good idea to go back by yourself and play with it.”

“Um, yeah?”

Colt shook his head. “How the hell did you even get to the spirit world on your own?”

“Black market dragon artifact.”

Colt rolled his eyes. “Because that never goes wrong. Can I see it?”

“It’s in my bag,” Remy said. “I thought it was better not to carry it around. Just for a while.” Colt raised his eyebrows. Remy added, “Because it kind of… went wrong?”

Colt looked at the last axe in his hand. “You know I’m contemplating throwing this one at your fat head, right?”

“Fuck off.”

Colt hurled the last axe at the target and said, “You better tell me the whole thing.”

So Remy sat down on the grass by an old fallen log and told him. The spirit world, the wolf/owl/leopard creature, the dragon boy. And finally, Jaeda.

It felt good to get it off his chest. He still didn’t know what the fuck to do, but at least he had his brother at his side again.

“Shit,” Colt said. “I turn my back on you for one minute, and this is what happens. Which one are you in love with? Jaeda or the ghost?”

“Neither,” Remy said. “Probably.” Was he? He shrugged uncomfortably. “You heard Brandon. If anything happened with me and Jaeda, everyfuckingbody in the world would come after me. And the other one… she’s a spirit, for fuck’s sake. But she made me feel…”