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“Start at the beginning,” Henry said, and he pulled out a bottle from the top shelf. “I have a feeling we’re going to need a drink.”
***
Chapter 28 - Nick
Nick told him everything. From the first touch with magic, the first time he felt the void, the first time he met Cara, everything. Everything up until Brett fell into the sunlight and didn’t burn to a crisp.
“And... Then I came home,” he finished. “I’ve been here a few times already, but he wasn’t here. I thought he might come home. Then I saw your car. You’re home early.”
“I had a feeling,” Henry said. “I knew something was wrong. Intuition, I guess.”
“Are you magic, too?” Nick asked. “At this point, nothing would surprise me.”
A small smile tugged at Henry’s mouth. “No. I’m not magic, and I’m not anything else, either. I’m human. I had a human feeling that something was wrong. I think it was something in your voice when you and your brother spoke to me on the phone. You said you were fine, but I know you. I should have come home sooner.”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” Nick said. “You would’ve been in danger. They took Brett. They probably would have taken you, too. They want leverage.”
Henry was studying the rim of his whiskey glass, but he raised his eyes to meet Nick’s gaze. “Because you’re a void.”
Everything inside him told him to look away, avert his gaze, but he forced himself to hold steady. He looked Henry in the eye and nodded. “Yes.”
“Do you know what that means? You’ve told me what happened, but do you know what it means to be a void?”
“I... Kind of.”
“How?”
“People react to me differently when they find out.”
Henry’s face tightened. “Fear.”
“Yeah.”
“Did they try to hurt you?”
“Not really,” Nick said.
“I don’t believe you.”
Nick smiled. “I should’ve learned by now that I can’t get anything past you.”
Henry sighed and reached across the table to put a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry, Nick.”
“So you don’t think voids are evil?”
“No, I don’t. I have an... unusual experience with the supernatural. From what I’ve seen, witches or vampires or voids, they’re just people. People with power and strange abilities, and different things that want to influence their personalities. But when it comes down to it, they’re still people. You can have good vampires, and you can have bad witches. I’m sure you can have good voids.”
“Have you met any voids before?”
“No,” Henry said. “But I’ve heard the myths, the legends, the ghost stories.”
“They’re all bad,” Nick said. “They always end with the evil void killing people.”
“They’re stories,” Henry said. “Just stories.”
“They could be real.”
“Give it some time,” Henry said. “You’re new at this, but after a while, you’ll see that the stories aren’t always right. In fact, in my experience, they’re rarely right. Until you meet a witch, you might never realise that they don’t spend their lives in a cabin in the woods brewing potions.”
