Dead Man’s Deal. Jocelynn Drake

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СКАЧАТЬ the emotions that I had managed to get a handle on. “Why are you fucking working for Reave? You’re not an idiot. Fuck. How could you do this to Mom and Dad?”

      “Do this to Mom and Dad?” he repeated, looking at me like I had lost my mind. “I’m not doing this to them. I’m helping myself, and what the fuck do you care about Mom and Dad? What the fuck do you care about any of us? You left!”

      “Of course I left!” I shouted, jumping to my feet. Robert pushed to his feet as well so I wouldn’t tower over him. Whatever fear he was feeling toward me wasn’t there now—we were both too pissed. “I had to leave if I wanted to protect you and Meg and Mom and Dad. The Towers might have let me go, but they weren’t going to let me live happily ever after. I’ve had warlocks and witches hunting me for years. You think they wouldn’t have tried to use you or Meg as leverage to get me to do what they wanted? Fuck! I left because I had to.”

      “You should have never come back in the first place!” Robert roared. I took a step back, my anger instantly melting away, but Robert didn’t notice. Apparently there was something on his mind that he had been itching to vent. “When you disappeared as a kid, we told the world that you had been killed in an accident. You think we could tell anyone that you became one of them? We would have been lynched in a heartbeat. But no! You came back, destroying everything. Dad tried to make up stories, like you were a distant cousin, but no one believed him. They knew you had been taken to the Ivory Towers. They knew you were a warlock, and everything changed.”

      Robert paced a couple angry steps away from me and then turned back, his face twisted with pent-up rage and pain. “You want to know why Mom and Dad moved to Low Town? Because of you. They left Vermont and New Hampshire and Pennsylvania and West Virginia because they were trying to outrun the rumors that they had given birth to a warlock. They came to Low Town to hide!”

      I collapsed on the couch behind me, staring blindly at the wall. Whatever anger I had felt only seconds ago about my brother being a part of the Low Town Mafia evaporated. My chest ached and there was a lump growing in my throat threatening to cut off my breathing. In my lifetime, I had been burned, stabbed, poisoned, shot, and had a chunk of my soul ripped off. This felt worse. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to move. It hurt to think, but I couldn’t stop my mind from churning over the same thought. If I had never returned home after leaving the Towers, my family would have been happy, healthy, and safe.

      I had been sixteen when I left the Towers and I couldn’t think of any place I wanted to go more than home to my family. I hadn’t seen them in nine years, but they still represented the only happy memories I had in my life. They were laughter, warmth, and love wrapped in a modest middle-class home on an old tree-lined street in Vermont. I had nowhere else to go and nowhere else I wanted to go. I knew that it was only temporary; I didn’t trust the council’s promises and reassurances. But I needed help and my feet set. I was only sixteen.

      When I walked in the front door, Mom cried. She held me so tight and cried tears of joy. She cried for four days every time she looked at me. Dad cried too, his arms wrapped around Mom and me. No one asked questions. We hugged, cried, and were happy to be together. I could only guess that was before anyone started to think about how the rest of the world would react to my miraculous return from the dead.

       I should never have gone home.

      “Gage, man,” Robert whispered beside me. The couch shifted as he sat down again, but I was still staring straight ahead, my body so stiff that muscles ached. I was afraid that if I moved, I’d shatter. I had destroyed my family. I destroyed them by being a warlock and by returning home to give away their secret shame.

      “I didn’t know.” My voice was rough and low like I had been gargling razor blades, and it was starting to feel that way as well.

      “I know. They didn’t want you to know and, man, I’m a fucking idiot. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s not your fault.”

      A short, bitter laugh escaped me as I looked over at him through narrowed eyes. “Yeah, not my fault that I was born a warlock, but it was my fault that I came home.”

      “We never felt that way.” I frowned at him, not needing the lies. Robert squeezed my shoulder and smiled. “Well, okay, so maybe I was pissed at you for a year or two right before I dropped out of college, but then I got my shit together. Mom and Dad never regretted you coming home. Not once.”

      “I ruined their lives. I’m guessing I screwed up yours pretty badly as well as Meg’s.”

      Robert gave my shoulder a shove but didn’t let go when I started to look away from him. “It’s not your fault. Blame it on the assholes in the Towers. Hell, better yet, blame it on the assholes that ran us out of New England. They only focused on the fact that you’d been born a warlock—which could have happened to any one of them just as easily. They should have been focusing on the fact that Mom and Dad raised a kid who was smart and brave enough to fucking leave the Towers.”

      I nodded, trying to breathe. “Thanks.”

      Robert dropped his hand back to his lap while reaching for his drink with the other hand. I did the same and we both finished our first glass before either could speak again. The alcohol would numb the worst of the pain. There was truth to what Robert had said, all of what he said. It wasn’t all my fault, but by the same token, I should never have gone home when I was a teenager.

      “You should go see them,” Robert suggested. He reached across the table and snagged the bottle, pouring us both a new glass.

      “Mom and Dad?”

      “Yeah. I know they’d love it. They miss you.”

      I sat back against the couch and stretched out my legs, trying to ease the tension crawling through my frame. “I don’t know if it would be safe.”

      “I think they would argue that it’s worth the risk.” Robert took a drink and smiled at me. When he spoke again, his voice was rough from the whiskey burn. “Do you honestly think it’s ever going to be safe? You’re wasting time.”

      “You could always go talk to them first for me. Warn them that I’m in town, what I look like now so it wouldn’t be such a shock if I showed up on their doorstep.” Robert frowned at me and remained silent. Yeah, I wasn’t exactly subtle. I wanted to hear why he was no longer talking to our parents. “Did you fight?”

      “No, not really.”

      “So … what? You just stopped seeing them? Stopped answering the phone when Mom called?”

      “Pretty much.”

      I set my cup on the table and waited. Robert sighed before downing the last of his drink and placing his empty cup next to mine. “Things didn’t work out at college,” he started.

      “Because of me.”

      He shrugged. “Part of it, but I think I was looking for an excuse. I was tired of school, wanted to be doing something. I made some friends here that I probably shouldn’t have, started helping them out on the occasional job. I knew the business they were in, but I told myself that I wouldn’t get drawn in.” He stopped and stared down at his hands.

      “But you did.”

      Robert looked at me with a little self-mocking smile. “Reave came to me and offered me a job personally. Said I was good. He offered me a lot of money and I took it. I told myself that I wasn’t hurting СКАЧАТЬ